


Lucidity

by BlueNeutrino



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Dreams, Gen, Kinda, Plot, Russian hackers, inside dreams inside dreams, kinda continuing my theme of cardio horror, look at me being topical
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-06 23:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17354810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueNeutrino/pseuds/BlueNeutrino
Summary: The CIA want information extracted from the mind of the daughter of a Russian oligarch suspected of election interference. Dominic Cobb is the famed extractor whose team are blackmailed into the taking the job. But once deep in the dreamworld, Elena Rostova's dangerous lucidity poses a threat to Eames' life.





	1. The Gambler

**Author's Note:**

> This is your recent Tom Hardy convert reporting in. It's been a while since I wrote a multichapter fic so I'm oiling my gears. This fic will be ensemble cast but mostly Eames-centric, plot-heavy, featuring OCs and mostly ship-free (excepting Eames x Arthur BrOTP. Maybe a little Arthur/Ariadne.) Can't believe I didn't get into this movie sooner because it ticks so many of my boxes.

Eames is wearing a black tuxedo and a flirtatious smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. Among the gamblers, strategists and chancers laying chips upon green felt, or watching with hawk eyes while roulette wheels spin and dealers trade diamonds and reveal hearts, he feels perfectly at home.

That doesn't mean he's quite at ease, but he certainly gives the impression of it as he leans back against the bar with the air of a man surveying his empire. He could play at being James Bond if he wanted: dream up a gun inside his jacket to go with the vodka martini he's drinking, but he's not here for pleasure. Not that being an international superspy landing himself right in the middle of danger feels so far removed from reality right now.

"Could I tempt you with a high stakes wager?" he murmurs, leaning closer to the woman sat next to him as he slips a playing card out of his sleeve and slides it over the bar towards her. Even she looks like she could be a Bond girl, deep auburn hair elegantly tied up in a complicated Chinese knot that accentuates a long, graceful neck, while her black dress is cut low enough to reveal sharp collarbones before cloaking the rest of her body like a shadow. Her eyes are pale blue. Too pale, almost. Hard like sapphires.

Those eyes glance up at him coldly from beneath long lashes before she reaches out to rest a fingertip on the back of the card, tapping once before a lacquered fingernail hooks beneath the edge and turns it over. Seven of spades. There's a slight misprint on the suit in the upper corner, leaving off the stem so that it more closely resembles an inverted black heart.

It takes her a moment to consider, then she decides the symbol is proof enough of who he is. "What kind of wager?" Even hailing as he knows she does from Moscow, there's barely a trace of an accent in her voice.

"I'm afraid I don't have the password, so you're going to have to gamble on whether or not to trust me. Get it right, and we're both in the money. Get it wrong, and you risk being shot on the way out of here."

Her eyes narrow, fixing him with a scrutinising stare. He knows he's the real gambler in this situation, needing her to co-operate, but nor is he the type to take unnecessary risks. They've played their cards right. She'll trust him.

A beat passes, then the woman looks away and takes a sip of her drink. When she speaks, her tone is cold and businesslike. "I'm told you have something for me."

It worked, then. Eames leans closer, letting his eyes flit up briefly to glance at Arthur watching from across the casino, then returns his attention to their mark. "Let's not discuss it here. Somewhere more private."

"Your hotel room?" She looks at him with a skeptically raised eyebrow that says " _in your dreams."_

 _Well,_ he thinks, _where else?_ "Elena." It's his first time using her name, and he sees her bristle, caught off guard. "Allow me to explain the situation…"

"Let me guess," she cuts him off. "We're sleeping."

The words die in Eames' throat. He abruptly freezes, almost forgetting to breathe.

"This is your dream," she continues, clearly enjoying the sudden deer-in-headlights look on his face. "Inside your friend's dream, inside another friend's dream. And you've brought him—" Her head turns to gaze towards the exact spot where he'd seen Arthur just moments before, and it's a fight for Eames to suppress his panic as he realises the projections around them have all gone still. "And _him_ along for the ride." Her head turns again, this time fixing on Cobb standing over by the blackjack table, shock and panic on his own face as two of her subconscious bouncers close in to keep him from trying to run. "Dominic Cobb. He has quite the reputation. I'm actually surprised he isn't the one I'm sat here talking to."

When Eames looks back at Elena again, she's smiling.

It takes him a moment to gather his thoughts, fighting back the instinctive _oh shit_ reaction at realising they've been made and trying to keep up the calm facade. "They said you were exceptionally skilled at evading extraction," he remarks, and suddenly realises just why all teams that had attempted this before them had failed.

"They downplayed it." Elena sips at her cocktail again, insufferably smug. "I've known exactly what was happening since the first level of the dream, Mr Eames. Set up to perfectly replicate my hotel room in the real world so that when I wake inside it, I'll believe I'm no longer dreaming. That's why you needed three levels. The level after that, you pretend to be my boss, give me an assignment, establish a contact. On this level, you pretend to _be_ that contact. How am I doing so far?"

He grits his teeth, knowing she has them figured out. "Almost entirely accurate."

"I won't ask what my errors are. It doesn't matter. See, here's what actually happened, Mr Eames." Her smile widens as she leans closer, savoring her triumph. "The minute after _your_ people put us all under, _my_ people stormed the room you're holding me in, captured your chemist, took control of your PASIV unit, and established a means of communicating with me inside the dream. At the signal from me, one of my men will inject a chemical into your veins that will stop your heart. From that point, they'll have five minutes in which to revive you before brain damage begins to set in. Eight minutes, you're a vegetable. Ten minutes, you're dead. So, to be on the safe side, let's say you'll want them to revive you within four minutes. First level of the dream, that's an hour. Second level, twelve hours. This level, five days. And if you want me to send the signal for them to do that, you are going to tell me everything you know about the CIA's plans to come for me."

Eames' mind is racing. He blinks, and the sudden panic he'd earlier felt quickly turns to outright fear. "You're bluffing. There's no way for you to communicate with the real world from inside the dream."

Oh, but she's enjoying this. "Rapid eye movement. They attach sensors to my skull, I can send signals that my people know how to interpret. Don't believe me?"

"Not at all." He doesn't sound as confident as she'd hoped.

Elena only shrugs. "Well, unfortunately for you, I don't have to prove anything. I already did it. In the real world, I'd say...about a minute ago. Right now, your heart is making its final beat. Check if you don't believe me." She holds out a hand to him, and in it he can see a stethoscope has materialised. Eames ignores it.

"I don't have the information you want," he says, voice hushed as if fearful he'll be overheard even in his dreams. "The American government hired us off the books. I'm not a spy; I'm a forger. They told us the barest minimum we needed for this job. I don't know anything."

"Sure you do." She says it with absolute confidence, and Eames begins to feel a dreadful certainty that this isn't a bluff. A disconcerting inability to sense his own heartbeat while sleeping doesn't help. "They briefed you on this. You've been to their offices, spoken to their people. You know _something_. It's all buried somewhere in your head, and you've got five days to find out where."

"Even if I did know something, if they find out I not only failed to extract what they wanted from you but actually _handed over_ classified information to a foreign agent, I'd be spending the rest of my most likely shortened life in Guantanamo Bay."

"Not my problem." It's accompanied by another shrug. "See, here's what's going to happen if you don't get me what I want: you die, this dream collapses, and so we fall back to the next one. In the head of your architecture graduate, I believe. Tiny little thing, isn't she? Don't imagine she really knows what she's gotten herself into." Eames clenches his jaw at the mention of Ariadne. "We try this again, and if that fails, then we fall back to the first level. Chemist with the beard, am I right? That fails, he dies too." Shouldn't have gone to Yusuf, either. Their contractors could have found someone else capable of stabilising a three-level dream, but it's too late. "I guess I wake up with nothing gained, nothing lost. But the three of you don't wake up at all. Worth a try at least, don't you think, Mr Eames?"

Eames says nothing. He doesn't know what he _could_ say.

The lights in the casino flicker. Paying it no heed, Elena flags down another bartender for a refill and sips at the cocktail with a sadistic glee. "You need to work on the design of your drinks," she remarks, shooting him a taunting glance. "This one tastes like fear."


	2. The Vault

For a split second longer, Eames doesn't move. A roulette wheel spins behind him, refusing to stop like the whirring cogs in his mind as a plan refuses to form. He glances down at the items on the bar: his own cocktail glass, with half its previous contents and less than half its former appeal; the stethoscope, and the playing card. Its suit has changed, he notices. Four of hearts.

"Take it," Elena remarks in response to his silence. "In case you need a reminder. I'll be waiting."

He considers, then snatches up both that and the stethoscope, turning away from her as his eyes search in the crowd again for Arthur. "Elena." His voice is hard. "I'm not the one making the drinks."

An unconcerned eyebrow raises. "Then pass the message onto your friend."

Movement begins to start up around them again as Eames hurries back to Arthur, Elena's projections turning their attention away from him and back to their games, yet moving among them feels no less threatening now that he knows how well she has them controlled. The bouncers have eased up to let Cobb pass, and he rushes to join them with the same look of confusion and panic that Eames is sure is on his own face.

"What the hell was that?"

"We're made and I'm dying. I think that about covers it," Eames says dryly, eyes darting round for the exit. This is supposed to be his own dream, yet already his memory is failing.

"What do you mean you're dying?" Arthur's eyes have widened.

"She's got her own team. They know this is my dream, and they're going to kill me up there for real if I don't give her what she wants." His eyes finally find the fire escape. "We need to get out of here. Somewhere safe." He begins to stride towards it, the two of them keeping pace as they cast wary glances at the projections around them. It appears that they're being ignored, but Eames knows the truth is anything but.

"Wait, what? How does she know and what does she want?"

Eames can hear the panicked confusion in Arthur's voice, but doesn't dare look at him in case his own face shows something even worse. "How, I have no idea. But she knows, and she wants intel on how the CIA are coming after her." They duck through the fire exit, but it doesn't lead outside. Instead, there's a long white corridor, strangely devoid of features like an incomplete level of a video game, save for the elevator at one end.

"We don't have that intel," Cobb says, glancing the opposite way down the corridor and realising it's endless.

"She thinks we do."

"Regardless. We're made. Abort mission; time to pull out. The kick will be coming in a couple of hours if we can hold out that long." Cobb turns back to face the elevator, begins to hurry down the corridor towards it as all three of them instinctively know it's their only choice. Elena's projections haven't followed. Yet.

"There isn't going to _be_ a kick, Cobb," Eames says, voice terse. "Her people must have followed us into the dream. You think they're going to let Yusuf and Ariadne wake us up?"

Cobb has gone pale, hurriedly recalculating. "Alright. Then we just need more time. Where's the most secure place in here you can get us?"

"Downstairs. The vault." They're at the elevator, and Eames drags open the grill with a metallic screech as he glances back along the corridor and wonders why they still haven't been followed.

"The vault? You're sure?" Arthur follows him inside, but still looks hesitant. "You build a vault, you're mind's going to put sensitive things inside. It may be fortified, but if she follows us…"

"Well, if revealing my secrets to her is what keeps me alive, just maybe I'll let her," Eames snaps, jaw clenched tight as the white floor recedes above them and the elevator descends with a groan. He refuses to look at either of the others, knuckles whitening as he grips the stethoscope still clutched in his hand.

Arthur glances down at it and swallows. "Eames, why do you have that?"

If he says it, even trapped in a made-up reality, it's going to feel all too real. "She says she already did it," he manages to choke out, reaching up to undo the ridiculous black bow tie and unpop a couple of buttons. It's getting harder to breathe. "Up there, a minute or so ago. They injected me with something and stopped my heart."

Arthur and Cobb exchange nervous glances. "You believe her?" Cobb ventures anxiously. "You think it's even possible she could know from down here?"

"Well, I guess I can find out, can't I?" May as well get this over with. Eames grits his teeth and puts the end of the stethoscope in his ears, then hesitates just a moment before pressing the other end to his chest.

His silence and the look on his face says it all.

Arthur and Cobb look at each other again. "Eames, it doesn't mean anything," Arthur is quick to say. "This level of the dream, time's distorted. You only have one heartbeat every ten, fifteen minutes. If you're hearing nothing, you just haven't timed it right."

"Well, that's a nice theory, Arthur, but you know as well as I do that the brain is constantly aware of the heartbeat. It just filters it out from your consciousness so as not to drive you mad. But if it were there, and I listened for it, I'm sure my brain would let me know. So maybe the reason all I can hear is _fucking silence_ is that she isn't bluffing and I'm already dead."

He snaps the final sentence and wrenches the stethoscope from his ears just as the elevator reaches its destination, clunking into position on the very bottom floor. Cobb drags back the grill, moving quickly towards the steel door and brass dial of the casino vault in front of them even while staring worriedly at Eames. "You aren't dead yet. The dream integrity's holding."

"For now." Eames' mouth has gone try as her turns the dial to let them in. "This level of the dream, she's given me four days before I'm beyond hope of revival. So, if you can come up with a new plan, Cobb, think fast."

They enter the vault: a stunningly bright room with no apparent light source and a floor carpeted in rich burgundy, the walls lined with shelves of stacked bills in no obvious currency or denomination any of them recognise. In the middle of the vault, there's a table laden with a large pile of silver coins, and against the back wall, a row of safety deposit boxes.

The door clangs shut behind them. A heavy thunking sounds as the mechanism buried inside turns and the locks slide into place. Eames hopes it will last.

"Alright, plan of action," he mutters, leaving the stethoscope on the table and crossing to one of the safety deposit boxes as the keys materialise in his hand. The playing card he's put in his breast pocket: resting over his heart as an ominous reminder of his remaining days until times runs out.

"Eames," he hears Arthur's voice behind him, infuriatingly logical yet just barely calm. "She's got us all spooked but we still don't know anything for sure. You have a theory, but it's testable. Someone listens to your heart for twenty minutes, at most, then we know."

"I've got four days to live, Arthur. I don't have twenty minutes to spend just waiting." Eames turns back to them with the contents of the box in hand, and Arthur recognises the shining chrome case of a PASIV unit.

Cobb steps forward, wary. "Eames, what is it you're thinking…?"

"She wants to know what the CIA's plans are regarding her," Eames says, placing the briefcase down on the table and opening it up. "You're the one they came to about this job. That's in your head, Cobb. Not in mine."

Apprehensive eyes watch as he starts spooling out the IV tubes. "Eames, we're already three levels down. Another dream isn't going to hold."

“It doesn’t have to. I need to wake up again before this level collapses, which will take, what? Twenty, thirty minutes up here if I go one level deeper. It just has to stay stable long enough that I’ll know everything you do, then I actually have something to give her.”

Cobb starts. "No. We can't...I can't do that." He grits his teeth, then pinches the bridge of his nose as he contemplates how could this go so badly wrong. "Is your plan really to just _give her_ what she wants in the hope that it saves you?"

"My plan is to _survive._ " Eames' face has turned to a glare. "So, I intend to give her something she'll _believe_."

Arthur glances between the two of them, the _oh shit_ realisation truly beginning to sink in. Cobb stares at Eames, opens his mouth, then turns away and begins to pace as he gives a huff of frustration. "I can't do what you're asking, Eames! This is exactly why we didn't have me be the dreamer in the first place. I know too much. If I let her have that information, I go to prison for the rest of my life, and I have children to think of. They've already lost me once. I can't let it happen again."

When Eames speaks again, his voice is uncharacteristically cold. "You know if I die, her next target is Ariadne," he says, and Arthur could swear there's a palpable chill in the air. "You realise that, Cobb? Then Yusuf. Then I suspect she'll make some last ditch effort to get what she wants out of you and Arthur anyway, and kill you for good measure. You notice she hadn't followed us?" His eyes flit to the their surroundings. "That's the thing about vaults. This may be my dream, but I'm not the only one who can populate them. She wants to get to my secrets, she has to come here, but she risks revealing hers too. I said I intend to give her something she'll _believe."_ His gaze on Cobb is imploring. "Help me do that, Dom."

A beat passes, realisation passing over Cobb's face as he seems to realise what Eames his saying. Then he nods. "Alright," he agrees. "This is worth a shot." He strides to the PASIV unit and takes a needle, sitting himself on the floor as he begins to search for a vein.

Exhaling heavily, Eames follows suit and tries to find space to lie down beside the pile of coins on the table. "Put us under, Arthur," he says, offering his wrist to his friend, and just for a moment Arthur sees the look of unbridled fear that passes over his face. In what may be a vain effort to comfort, Arthur takes over trying to insert the needle. "That's your test," Eames says, and his eyes are almost pleading.

Arthur swallows, understanding. "I'll listen. I promise."

"Twenty minutes, wake us up."

"How?"

"Well, you have my permission to shove me off the table." Eames glances down at Cobb on the floor. "Do what you like with him."

Needles inserted, the both of them lie back, and Arthur lets his finger hover over the button to administer the somnacin. "Alright, good luck, and work fast. I can't guarantee there won't be some subconscious Russian constructs working to blow that door off its hinges at any second, so Cobb, whatever's in your memories he needs to see, get to it fast." He presses the button.

The effect isn't quite immediate, but it is swift. Two pairs of eyelids flicker, both bodies going slack, and then Arthur hears the quietest of sighs as Eames and Cobb slip deeper into unconsciousness. With a nervous glance at Eames' chest, he wonders if, having abandoned consciousness on this level, will he even appear to be breathing?

Arthur briefly checks on Cobb on the floor, confirming that the unit is functioning even though the sedative isn't designed to take them this deep. Twenty minutes. That’s all it has to hold for. If it doesn't...well. Arthur isn't sure that limbo is a worse fate than what might otherwise be waiting.

He crosses to the table, deciding it's worth a try to check the pulse in Eames' throat, then immediately regrets it as he feels the clamminess of his friend's skin. Whether he's actually dying or just believes that he is, it's hard for Arthur not to be convinced of it, too.

Arthur puts on the stethoscope, unfastening another button on Eames' shirt to let the chestpiece slip underneath, then holds up an arm to stare at his watch. The second hand counts on, and Arthur waits.


	3. The Train

Ariadne finds herself reminded of a painting that, no matter where you wander or how you turn, its eyes will follow you around the room. The barrel of the gun peers at her like an unblinking black eye, and however she shifts in her seat, dares to try inching further away, she always finds herself staring straight down it.

The woman sat behind the weapon gives her a hard stare. "Stop squirming."

It's said in a thick Russian accent, the glare on her sharp, angular face made more severe by the way her blonde hair is scraped back from her forehead into a tight bun. The black pantsuit she wears is similar to Ariadne's own, albeit sitting on a taller frame, and coupled with the severity of her ice blue stare, it lends her an air of refined, menacing elegance. The uzi in her hand seems all the more brutish for the contrast.

Ariadne swallows, and casts a glance around the train car one more time. Through the windows, the pitch black of the tunnel rushes by, granting Ariadne a reflected view in the glass of faces she can't quite see. Cobb and Arthur are in seats beside each other the opposite side of the aisle, IV cables stretched across the gap, while Eames is slumped one row down. Elena is in the seat beside the woman, electrodes attached to her forehead, while the PASIV device lies on the table between them. Propped up by the Russian's elbow, the gun hovers a foot or so above it.

"You don't want to fire that," Ariadne says, and is relieved that it comes out with the confidence she intended. "You shoot me, this dream collapses and drops them all into limbo. Including your boss."

"I'm aiming at your shoulder."

Ariadne could swear she isn't, but who's to say where a bullet would go in a dream.

On the table in front of Elena's unconscious form, there's a coffee cup bearing the logo of the Eurostar First Class. Barely drunk, the latte foam boasts a neat spade-shaped pattern, the stem smudged by Elena's first sip of the drug-laced drink. A small, pager-like device lies beside the saucer, wires running from various ports to the electrodes mounted on Elena's head. Ariadne doesn't recognise it.

"You're real, aren't you?" Ariadne says to the Russian. "Not a projection."

No answer. It doesn't matter. Ariadne can tell. Whatever happened up in the real world, they've been followed.

A beeping sounds from the device resting beside the coffee. Ariadne watches closely as the woman picks it up and studies the screen, though the angle is slanted too far for her to tell what it says. All she sees is the reaction, expressionless, but then the woman puts the device down and rises from her seat.

The gun stays on Ariadne.

"Don't move."

Taking care to avoid the cables, she takes a step down the car towards Eames and reaches out with her free hand to touch his neck, checking his pulse. A frown forms on Ariadne's face as she watches, and then the door at the end of the coach slides open. A man with a beard and brandishing a submachine gun strides in. "Ana." It's followed by something in Russian Ariadne doesn't understand.

"Artem." The woman glances back at him and they exchange a few more words. Neither seem stressed, confident that things are going their way, and taking her attention at last from Ariadne, Ana strides a few more steps in his direction. For the first time, her weapon's aim falters.

Ariadne hesitates just a moment. If she's to attempt this, she has to commit. She ducks beneath the table.

The train hits a kink in the track.

The resulting rumble sends a jolt through all of them, and Ana stumbles, clutching at the top of one of the empty seats for support. Her eyes widen, wondering if that was the accidental result of something one level up or the deliberate design of the architect, and then harden as they search for the architect in question. " _You._ "

Too late. The train car is stretching.

It comes as naturally to Ariadne as it had that first time warping the streets of Paris to fold earth into sky. Ana tries to run for her, but the gap between them is widening faster. Instead, she and Artem heft their guns, letting off a burst of fire, but as the car elongates a ripple flurries through the structure. New seats spring into place, emerging from the floor and folding down from the ceiling in a way that forms an effective barricade against the fire. Ariadne stays crouched on the floor, close to Arthur's leg as she watches the Russians receding into the distance, and braces herself.

_Split._

Like a bacterium, the train car divides. A metal shield curls itself around the gap rent in the middle of the coach, forming a new end until all that's left is the gap of the doorway through which Ariadne sees the reforming car ahead rushing along the track into the dark.

_Throw the switch. Come on, concentrate._

There's another sharp jolt as the railroad switch shifts. The car occupied by Ariadne and the sleepers briefly rocks, and then the lights of the rest of the train vanish as the solitary coach hurtles off down a new branch of the tunnel.

Shakily, Ariadne gets to her feet. She has no idea where they are. This place wasn't part of her design.

As the train begins its rolling stop, she checks briefly on the others: most have emerged unscathed, though Arthur's arm is bleeding from where a bullet clipped him. He'll live.

 _We need to wake up,_ is the thought pressing urgently at the front of Ariadne's head. _Cheat the sedative. We have to get out of here._

She's grasping at the tops of seats to support her trembling legs as she makes her way towards the end of the coach where the door remains propped open, granting full view of the blackness beyond. There'll be no running the train off the end of the track for a kick now, like they'd planned. Without the engines, the car will be stopping soon.

Ariadne comes to stand in front of the doorway, braces herself against the frame, and thinks:

_Corkscrew._

The track shifts. The lights by the wheels are just enough for her to see as the rails and sleepers begin to climb the tunnel's cylindrical walls. The train car follows.

 

* * *

 

Arthur feels the first jolt as a sharp tug at the base of his spine while the lights in the vault give a flicker. Breaking concentration just for a moment, he glances upwards, abstractly wondering what's going on up there. "No, not yet," he murmurs, gaze returning anxiously to Eames' face. "We need more time."

It's been thirteen minutes, by his count. The stethoscope hasn't left Eames' chest for a moment and Arthur still hasn't heard anything. By now, he no longer expects he's going to. There's no avoiding the truth any longer: his friend is dying. By the absence of Eames' breathing and the coolness of his skin, Arthur could almost think he's already dead.

A sudden ache interrupts his thoughts as it blooms without warning just beneath his left shoulder. Arthur blinks, looking down to see a trickle of dark red oozing through his sleeve. _Shit,_ he thinks. Ariadne's in trouble.

She might need him. So does Eames. "Just hang in there," Arthur mutters, pleading with them both to hold on. For the next seven minutes at least, unless Eames is going to open his eyes right there alongside him, Arthur doesn't intend to wake up.

He doesn't get a choice. The next jolt comes as a sharp wrench that lifts him clean off the ground, and then he's falling.

 

* * *

 

Ariadne doesn't manage to hold on as the carriage completes its loop. She hadn't really expected that she would. As the wheels reach the ceiling she feels herself wrenched off her feet, car barely clinging to the track as centripetal force fights gravity and the sleepers are launched into momentary freefall.

Then the train comes down again. The wheels screech, clatter back onto the flat, and the track buckles. Sparks fly from the axles as the carriage grinds to a stop.

Gingerly, Ariadne picks herself up from where she's landed in the aisle, praying she hasn't inadvertently caused any snapped spines as she gazes at the crumpled forms of the sleepers strewn across the carriage. "Oh, come on," she exclaims, seeing no movement. "You can't all have slept through that."

It takes a moment longer for her to realise they haven't. There's a groan, followed by signs of life as one of them begins to stir. "Arthur!"

He blinks in confusion as she reaches him, finding himself slumped half in the aisle and half under the seats. Cobb is still lying unconscious across his legs. "Ariadne? No, I can't be here...I need to go back…"

She helps him sit up as he tries to recover from his daze and tugs the cannula from his wrist. "Elena's men followed us. We're made. We have to pull out _now._ "

"No, we can't." Like a switch has flipped in his head, Arthur suddenly fixes his gaze on her with perfect focus. "She has Eames."

"What?"

"Her people injected him with something to stop his heart. She won't revive him until he gives her what she wants."

"Wait, what? How? And what does she want?"

He's no longer looking at her as he scrambles to his feet, wincing from the pain in his arm, and rushes to find Eames lying several feet away on the floor. Hands sweep carefully over the forger's body, checking for damage, but the real damage is far better hidden and far more sinister.

"Classified information," Arthur explains hurriedly, "She's got some means of communicating with her team in the real world. Interpretation of rapid eye movement."

As he works to get Eames propped up against the seats, something clicks in Ariadne's mind. She crosses to Elena lying haphazardly over the tabletop, electrodes still stuck securely to her head. Her expensive suit is drenched in coffee. "You mean something like this?"

Ariadne snatches up the pager-like device from where it's dangling over the edge into the aisle and holds it out to him.

Arthur glances up, and his eyes widen as if he's suddenly scored bingo. "What does it say?"

"It's in Russian."

Arthur looks like he wants to swear. "Doesn't matter. What's important is I get down there _now_ to wake him up before the dream collapses." He tugs off his tie, then begins to fasten it crudely around his bicep in an effort to stem the bleeding.

"Why hasn't he woken up already?"

"Him and Cobb went into Cobb's dream to pull out the information Elena wants. They're in too deep. If I'm not there to wake them, Eames' dream will crumble and they'll both end up stuck in limbo."

"Then...what about Elena?"

Arthur looks up, following her uneasy gaze to where the redheaded Russian is lying still very much asleep. He swallows. "I don't know."

It doesn't get much further thought as he starts spooling a fresh IV line from the PASIV device, safely intact inside its chrome case. His priority right now is getting back down there where there'll be time enough to figure it out.

"Arthur, wait." Ariadne has begun to struggle with shifting the much larger Cobb into a more comfortable position, blood trickling from his own forehead where he'd cracked it against the table. She gets as far as lying him flat on his back in the aisle when a thought occurs to her. "This train isn't moving and Elena's team are still out there somewhere. You go back down there, how am I meant to wake you again?"

Arthur hadn't planned that far ahead. Nothing about this had been part of a plan. "You think you can manage to wake Eames? It's his dream. It collapses all the way, hopefully that will be enough to pull me and Cobb with him." _Assuming it doesn't just send us both crashing back into limbo._

Ariadne bites the inside of her cheek, thinking. "Remember the Fischer job? He was shot in the dream. We used a defibrillator to bring him back."

"The difference being Fischer wasn't actually dead."

"Well, neither is he." She jerks her head at Eames. "Not yet. He's here. His body is his own projection of himself. I'm not imagining him, or you."

 _She's right,_ Arthur realises, and hearing her say it fills him with a sudden rush of hope. _Eames isn't dead yet._ "Alright. You got a defibrillator?"

She's one step ahead of him, pulling it from an overhead compartment beside the emergency stop button. "Got it."

Arthur slides the IV needle into a vein and resets the somnacin pump while Ariadne fumbles with the buttons on Eames' shirt. "I didn't realise he had so many tattoos," she comments, and Arthur glances up.

"Oh yeah." He sounds unsurprised. "He does."

Ariadne sticks the pads into place and turns the machine on. On the screen where she'd expect to see a readout of Eames' heart rate, there's nothing. She feels a chill. "Alright, I'm ready." The reality of their situation is beginning to sink in. "How long do you need?"

"He has four days down there. At this level? Give us ten hours."

"Provided Yusuf doesn't have other plans." She glances in the general direction of _upwards_ and wonders what's happened to the chemist.

The look on Arthur's face says he's wondering the same thing. "He's smart, like you. He can handle himself." His finger hovers over the red button on the PASIV.

"Arthur?" Ariadne meets Arthur's eyes one final time before they close. "Good luck."


End file.
